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An Interview with Phil Western of Download and PlatEAU
Posted: Saturday, August 18, 2007
By: Ilker Yücel
Editor

Born in Vancouver in 1971, Phil Western may be best known as half of the Subconscious Communications collectives Download and PlatEAU. Collaborating with cEvin Key as far back as the sessions for Skinny Puppy's The Process, and soon taking the reigns as Key's partner in the more high-profile of his post-Puppy projects, producing a wide range of schizophrenic rhythmic assaults and psychedelic ambient textures that have defied categorization, yet appealed to fans of techno, IDM, and industrial alike. Western, also known under the monikers of Kone and DJ Philth, has also produced music for XMT, Cap'm Stargazer, Floatpoint, Off and Gone, and Frozen Rabbit, as well as a variety of remixes for the likes of Monster Magnet, Rob Halford, and Metallica, proving his mettle in metal, so to speak. On top of all this, Western has four solo albums under this belt, marking him as a prolific force in the world of electronic music with his uniquely varied approach. Now, six years after the last Download album, Effector, and five years after the original Vault series, Western collaborates with Key yet again, releasing Download's FiXeR and PlatEAU's Kushbush as part of the Vault II series, furthering a legacy of creativity and eccentricity that is often imitated by hordes of underground electronic artists but rarely achieved. Western takes some time to Download ReGen into his Subconscious PlatEAU, explaining not only his process of making music, but his perspective on his recent move to Los Angeles, the prospects of Download playing live again after more than a decade, and the anticipation he feels when he approaches a Roland TR-808 drum machine.

Let's start off with your work in Download. The band just released its first album of new material in six years, not counting Inception and III Steps Forward from the Vault series. What was the reason for such a long wait between Effector and FiXeR? How has your working relationship with cEvin changed over the years, and how do you feel the new music reflects those changes?

Western: There were a lot of reasons for the gap between the albums. I think what happened was that logistically, making records together was becoming more difficult, due to the fact that I lived in Vancouver and cEvin lived in Los Angeles. Initially, there was a lot of friction between us, which dissipated over time, and then both of us became wrapped up in our own projects. I made a few albums during that time, and cEvin recorded and toured with Skinny Puppy. Last year, I made the move to Los Angeles, and that made things a lot easier in terms of being able to get together on a daily basis. The other thing that made things difficult was that I always stayed with cEvin when we made our albums, and he has several cats, which I am allergic to. So with me living in L.A., I could just come over to his house each day and work whenever there was inspiration to do so. Some days were quite short, and others were longer. It was a nice and relaxed work schedule, mostly because of me. I don't really work super long hours in the studio. I prefer to work when I actually have ideas and inspiration, which is kind of out of my control.

Working with you on FiXeR were Otto Von Schirach and Dre Robinson of Databomb. As they had both contributed to the recent Skinny Puppy releases, what was it like to be working with them? How did you find that their approaches to making music complemented what you and cEvin perform in Download?

Western: Well, Dre had done some percussion pieces for one of the songs on the album. The song was called 'Hoorse.' I wasn't actually in the studio with him when his work was done, so I never worked with him directly. Otto was there with us when the song 'Eruption' was recorded, and the way we did that was to give him basic tracks to put on his computer, and then he could mess with them and give them back. When the song 'erupts,' so to speak, I put his section in the track and then cut the left and right sides separately to create a sort of panning effect between the percussion hits. It was cool to just give him the rough pieces and see what he gave back.

Also performing on the new Download album for the first time since 1996's The Eyes of Stanley Pain is Mark Spybey. How did he come to be involved in the new record after more than a decade? What was it like to work with him on FiXeR, compared to when you last collaborated on Furnace and The Eyes of Stanley Pain?

Western: Again, Mark sent his parts over from England. He wasn't in the studio with us. I bounced out a rough mix of 'Hoorse' for him, and he sent back the pieces for us to place back into the song. In a way, it was like being given a really cool and unique sample library, which we used to spice up the song. Along with those pieces, he also sent us some experimental collages which were perfect outro/segue type segments for a couple of the other songs. Mark and I had been in touch through e-mail, and it was really cool to work with him again, although it would be even cooler to somehow get together in the future and record some of his performance and acoustic stuff. It was always very inspiring to see what he would come up with in the studio using his array of sound-making devices.

You also work with cEvin in PlatEAU, which has also released a new album, Kushbush. How would you say that PlatEAU has progressed or evolved since the last two releases, Spacecake and Iceolator?

Western: Kushbush has some of my favorite PlatEAU tracks of any PlatEAU album. Spacecake was cool, too. I felt like Kushbush was a personal milestone, because on some of the tracks that I wrote for it, like 'Bubba,' I had creative breakthroughs in terms of my programming and mixing, which felt like real accomplishments. Some of the older archival stuff on the record was really fun to resurrect, as well. A lot of the older tracks sound like Underground Resistance or something like that. I think it just flows really well as an album and has a lot of energy to it. Sometimes we finish a record and I'm not sure how I feel about it. Luckily, due to some unexpected circumstances, I had an opportunity to not hear either of these releases (FiXeR or Kushbush) for two months and then go back to them and listen to them, and it really made a difference. I had some objectivity again, and realized how strong some of the work is on there. It's the same when I listen to Spacecake now; there are some parts of it that sound sloppy and unrefined to me, but some of the tracks I worked very hard on, like '30 Daze' and also some of the ambient sections, really sound good to me still. 'Jack HErrEr' has always been a favorite of mine, too. That's part of the fun of being in these bands; we have a lot of material to go back to and revisit, and sometimes it holds surprises for even me, years after the records are done.

Working in two different projects with cEvin Key, and as many fans seemed to be under the impression that Download's Effector had much in common with your work in PlatEAU, how difficult is it for you and cEvin to distinguish between the two projects? How does your approach to making music differ between the two, and do you ever find them blending into each other, either deliberately or accidentally? How do you determine what piece of music goes to which project?

Western: It's funny. Usually an album is made as it is supposed to be. If we are working on a Download album, then we complete the series of songs for the Download album. Then we make a PlatEAU album, and the gear is the same, the people writing it are the same, and the method is relatively similar as well. If there is any difference in the methodology behind the two, it is subtle. PlatEAU generally is approached more as an 'anything goes' sort of project, and usually ends up being a little dancier, but the lines are definitely blurry and have become more blurry as time has gone on. The only real difference I see is that more techno-oriented music seems to find its way onto the PlatEAU albums. However, there are songs that could easily find their way onto either release. In fact, there are three or four songs on Kushbush that were outtakes from the FiXeR sessions. They just seemed to fit better in a different context when the album assemblies were done. Now that the records are done and released, I feel like it would be hard to imagine them any other way. It's almost a chicken or the egg situation; does it sound like PlatEAU because it ended up on a PlatEAU album, or did it end up on the PlatEAU album because it sounds like PlatEAU? I still don't know.

Besides your many collaborations, you also have a solo career, though your last release was in 2003, World's End! How would you say your approach to making music changes when you work on your solo material? When can we expect to see a new solo record from you?

Western: I have about half of an album recorded. I went through a lot of personal changes over the last couple of years. I left my hometown, and I dismantled my recording studio up there. I just completely changed my life and my surroundings, so now I'm not sure how I will finish another record, although the drive and desire to do so is strong. Over the last two years, I wrote songs and put them up on MySpace, and it was cool to see people responding so nicely to them. I tend to use a lot more organic elements on my solo material, and I like using vocals and guitars and live drums wherever possible. I enjoy engineering a lot and get a lot of satisfaction out of recording acoustic environments and then using a lot of different processing techniques to alter the sounds. My primary objective is to create a psychological experience with the music, and hopefully an emotional one. I'm not sure if I might be the only one who has the emotional response, though! It's funny, because sometimes the songs will remind me of a time and place, and whatever I was going through at the time I did the track, and that can be a powerful recall switch for me, but for most people, it will just be a song by some guy. Very occasionally, I will get an e-mail or a letter from someone who will tell me that they had a powerful emotional connection to the music, and I always find that extremely gratifying. That, of course, is the ultimate goal of making music, and the only thing that can keep it from being a totally narcissistic experience.

You've been a part of the Subconscious crew since the beginning, and have worked with a variety of vintage analog synthesizers. As laptops and soft-synths have become more widely utilized in the world of music, how does working with these new software tools compare to working with vintage hardware? What challenges and/or advantages did working with hardware combined with software present, and how has it affected the sound of your music?

Western: I actually like all of it. There are big advantages and disadvantages to both, and most of them are obvious. For instance, the old vintage stuff has a lot of character, but is hard to synchronize and to get under control. Most sequencers from that era don't have any type of groove control, and work on a very straight quantization. However, they seem to pull a different type of creativity out of the user. It's like working with a personality, whereas software is more convenient and easy to use, but maybe it's too easy, and of course nowadays the presets are mind-blowing and there is that lazy temptation to just use whatever comes up, although I try never to do that because it feels cheap and dirty to do so. I can honestly say that I don't favor one or the other in my process, and will tend to use hardware whenever I can. I love certain pieces of gear so much that when I approach them there is a feeling of excitement, and with the soft synths, because they are not tactile—sorry, a control surface just doesn't count—they don't produce that same feeling of anticipation that an 808 and an SH-101 will give me. I try to keep an open mind to all of it, though.

You mentioned moving to Los Angeles recently to be in closer proximity to cEvin, and I understand that you closed down your studio in Vancouver, The Yellow Door. Besides being closer to cEvin, how has working in Los Angeles affected your mindset as a musician? How does working in L.A. differ from working in Vancouver, and which would you say you prefer?

Western: I actually moved to L.A. because Vancouver had become kind of a drag for me personally. I have lived there my entire life, and was going through a lot of personal and crazy shit last year, not the least of which was having the building my studio was in get shut down. I was just sort of beat, and L.A. held some kind of promise for me. It turned out to be one of the best decisions I ever made. I am sure I will go back to Vancouver one of these days—I'm actually planning a visit there at the end of the month—but to live there doesn't interest me at this point. On the other hand, I'm Canadian and not totally set up immigration-wise to work in the USA, so time will tell.

Download had gone on tour in 1996, but has been primarily a studio project. What is the potential for Download or even PlatEAU to play live shows now?

Western: You know, this is one of those things where a lot of things get said, but very little happens in reality. And it has been a source of tension in the past between cEvin and me. I tend to be someone who doesn't say a whole lot about things that aren't actually happening, and at this point a tour definitely isn't happening. And the only way a tour happens in the real world is someone has to put up a lot of money, and that someone is usually the record company. In this case, the record company is cEvin, so Download or PlatEAU touring is basically contingent on cEvin investing a whole bunch of money, which at this point doesn't look likely, but you never know. I stay open to the possibility, but we have talked about touring for 10 years and never gone, so I would say that using history as a guide, it isn't likely anytime soon. Skinny Puppy is touring, however!

With so much material presented in these Vault sessions, from PlatEAU to Download to your work with Frozen Rabbit and your solo material, how do you manage to amass so much music between albums? How do you find time to take a breath, and what do you do in your spare time?

Western: I actually have a lot of spare time…too much, probably. I work whenever I can, and I never feel more at home than when I am sitting behind a mixing console, but the truth is that I don't work as obsessively now as I once did. The muse visits when she feels inclined to do so. I am always grateful to hear from her. What I do in my spare time is to hike up Runyon Canyon or make phone calls or to go eat Pho Ga at the Vietnamese noodle café or drive around L.A. or sit around on the computer. I live a pretty uneventful life, although I would say that I am utterly content. Traveling has been a very big part of my life, and sometimes I think about going back to school because I have been in the same career for almost 20 years. For the most part, though, I just live one day at a time, and see what life is going to do next.